Next year’s Super Bowl and men’s World Cup matches planned at Levi’s Stadium will draw such huge crowds to the Bay Area that the region’s leaders are hoping to draft the enthusiasm and tourist dollars they bring by planning festivities of their own — from concerts to block parties and drone shows.
As much as those events are intended to make for ebullient, rolling street parties, local leaders are preparing for something sinister as well: a worst-case scenario.
Santa Clara County’s O’Connor Hospital, for instance, just ran a drill with doctors, nurses and volunteers in its back parking lot. The hypothetical disaster? A bomb exploding with poison chemicals at Levi’s Stadium.
“With major sporting events coming next year, we’re really emphasizing more mass casualty training, decontamination training, hospital command center preparation,” said Sheila Tuna, who was running the drill for the county’s Santa Clara Valley Healthcare system. “We’re really just trying to get ahead of the game and prepared for anything that may come across.”
The Super Bowl is more than three months away, and if there have been any credible threats against the stadium that holds more than 68,000 fans, public safety officials aren’t saying.
That terrorists could turn a major sporting event into a horror scene, however, has been the stuff of Hollywood — the 1977 thriller “Black Sunday” revolved around a plot to bomb the Super Bowl. But real sporting events have been occasional targets of terrorists, from the 1972 Olympics in Munich to the 2013 Boston Marathon.
Safety officials at the stadium, meanwhile, used last summer’s Gold Cup soccer match between Mexico and Honduras as a security dry run for next summer’s FIFA men’s World Cup. And despite a lawsuit filed against the Trump Administration by several regional governments, including San Jose and Santa Clara County, over strings attached to federal disaster funds, the region’s public safety agencies and federal officials are teaming up to maintain public safety for the Super Bowl on Feb. 8 and six World Cup matches in June and July.
Security operations are always a part of any major event, and announcing stepped-up safety plans can be both a warning to bad actors and a reassurance to a jittery public. The Bay Area Host Committee last month agreed to pay the city of Santa Clara $6.4 million for added safety expenses.
But with political violence on the rise, security will be on heightened alert. Recent comments by Department of Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem to stage ICE agents at the stadium during the halftime performance of Puerto Rican pop star Bad Bunny, a major draw of Latino fans, will only increase tensions, security analysts say.
“We’ll be all over that place,” Noem said during an interview in early October. The only people who should be attending the event, she said, are “law-abiding Americans who love this country.”
But security consultant Michael Leininger, a former San Jose police detective, called Noem’s comments, which also criticized the NFL for being “so weak” by booking the musician, “unnecessary.”
“She’s creating problems, not solving problems,” said Leininger, who is familiar with some of Levi Stadium’s security procedures but is not part of its security operation. “You’re going to have a general sense of anxiety there. And I can see the potential for conflict with attendees. I can see the potential for conflict with ICE.”
Whether Noem will follow through with her threat is uncertain. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said days later that there was “no tangible plan” for ICE agents to be at the Super Bowl, adding, however, that the agency will “arrest and deport illegal immigrants when we find them if they are criminals.”
Regional public safety officials, from the Host Committee to the Santa Clara Police Department that is the lead public safety agency for Superbowl 60, declined to provide details of security operations, saying only that they are coordinating security with city, state and federal officials as well as NFL and FIFA leadership to prepare for any “human caused, technological, or natural hazards.”
The Department of Homeland Security, irrespective of any ICE operations, is always involved in major events, from Super Bowls to air shows to Mardi Gras and major marathons, providing intelligence and terrorist threat assessments.
“The safety and security planning process is highly collaborative and has been active for years, and we’re confident it will result in having the latest and most effective security protocols in place,” Zaileen Janmohamed, the Host Committee’s president & CEO, said in a statement. “Our highest priority is to ensure fans from and visiting the Bay Area have a positive and memorable experience that reflects the amazing spirit of our region.”
But if last year’s Super Bowl in New Orleans offers any roadmap, security will be intense. A month earlier, a Texas-born Army veteran carrying an ISIS flag plowed his truck into a crowd of revelers on famed Bourbon Street, authorities said, killing 14 people and injuring 57.
At the Superdome, armed federal agents were positioned on rooftops and at transportation hubs, with armored SWAT vehicles protecting the stadium. Blast barriers were set up around the perimeter and trucks were required to pass through giant X-ray machines. The event, which President Trump attended to the surprise of the crowd, remained safe.
Bay Area leaders are expecting the same.
“Large bustling crowds and activity can become a magnet for bad actors,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in a statement. “As San Jose prepares to step onto the world stage, we’re putting safety first — for residents and visitors alike.”
In the back parking lot of O’Connor Hospital early this month, Tuna and her team were doing just that. In the recent practice drill, they activated a command center and hazmat branch, and set up tents equipped with special hoses to wash down poisonous chemicals. Doctors and nurses, as well as employees from nearly every other area of the hospital, pitched in, many donning decontamination suits.
They “treated” plastic and inflatable dummies as well as volunteers from Mission College who acted like critically injured fans, some screaming in feigned pain. For a county-run system that operates four hospitals, two trauma centers, 15 urgent care clinics and a regional burn center, some 450 employees are trained to be ready to assist.
“We train all year long for any disaster or no-notice incident that may occur, whether it be an earthquake, a plane crash, car incident, a mass casualty, an explosion,” Tuna said. With two major sporting events ahead, she said, “We never know what we’re going to get, so we want to be prepared in any way that we can.”